Tag: 11×14 canvas panel

Honk! Honk! Honk!

A lady in my painting class paints animals so beautifully – lively, colorful, and full of personality. Me, I don’t usually paint animals. I did have fun painting the cats in gouache and sumi-e, so in a desire to expand my, er, repertoire?!, I decided to do some geese.

Painting animals, unless you are doing a portrait, don’t have to look exactly like the subject! Yay! Much less intimidating. So, geese.

Geese have such personality and they make me laugh when you see a bunch of them, necks extended, beaks up in the air. My geese aren’t quite so funny, but here is my donation to the painting of the animal kingdom.

I worked on this painting over several painting class sessions. Often I would put it up on the eraser edge under the white board of the classroom to ignore it and then look at it again, all the while working on another painting. Or munching on something, like cookies, that people like to bring in. Or wandering around to see what other people are doing. For reference, I looked at a lot of photos of white geese, trying to get a sense of their postures and poses.

Oil on canvas panel, 11×14.

Rainy Night, Snowy Night

Pixabay is a wonderful source for photos for painting subjects. Resources like this allow you – the artist or whoever – to explore worlds new to you. I, for one, doubt I shall ever visit a city with yellow trams unless I travel far from my current stomping grounds. This painting is derived from one such photo.

In the afternoon of one of my classes, I had about 20 minutes left to paint. The one I was working on was done to the point I could not go any further. It still needs to be finished while I try to figure out how to do the people in it.

I laid in an essential outline and some basic colors in those remaining 20 minutes and set it aside for the next class period, which is about 2.5 hours in length. I also decided to do it alla prima – finish it all at once. And, I did. Over the past few days I worked on some refinements, but very little.

The only thing I think I want to do a bit differently is the headlamp on the tram – make the white brighter and colder. To achieve this, I probably will use a cold blue mixed with titanium white.

Pretty pleased with this one!

Oil on 11×14 canvas panel.